Getting Picky Eaters to Eat Healthier: Baby Steps

My little boy will devour just about anything you put in front of him.

My husband and my little girl are not that way. Put something in front of them, and they will look at it, pick it up on their fork, take the tiniest of bites, allow it to swirl in their mouths before swallowing, then wait to see if there is any nasty aftertaste. By that point and time it usually tastes pretty disgusting anyway and they've deemed the food "undesirable."

Getting them to try anything new? Forget about it. 

So needless to say, getting them to eat healthy is a full-time job. However, in my quest to get them to start eating healthier, I've come across several ways to do it.

Go Slow

The first step is getting them to gradually switch to a food. Ever thrown out all the junk food out of your house on January 1st to live up to that New Year's resolution of healthy eating? Come January 3rd, you end up throwing away $200 worth of healthy food because you hated it.

Hmmm. Kids and adults are like that too. We're so used to eating a certain way that when we shock our bodies with a completely different way of eating, our palates revolt! They want those salty chips and sugary carbohydrates and empty caloric foods. We're used to that, and it tastes good!

A successful switch often comes with changing your way of eating slowly. When I switched our family to whole wheat pasta, the first time I cooked with it, I used a 1/8 ratio of whole wheat pasta to 7/8 white. The next time, I used a 1/4 whole wheat pasta ratio to 3/4 white pasta. Now I've completely switched our family over to whole wheat pasta. And my daughter says she likes the taste better!

This also works well for cookie and baking mixes when switching from white to whole wheat flour and from regular sugar to cane juice or other natural sugars. (Just know that you might need to switch your recipes around a little to accommodate the type of sugar you use.)

Keep Trying

Also remember that it often takes babies 10–12 times of trying a food before they will like it. No surprise that older humans are that way too.

It might take us several times of trying something until we develop a taste for it. You might find the first time was horrible. The second time trying that same food, it becomes "okay." And the third time, it's tolerable.

You'll find your taste buds will gradually change in time too. Sweets you once enjoyed will become horribly "too sweet" to you and will lose their appeal. Eating healthier, wholesome foods will change the way you see your empty, enriched foods. The desire just won't be there anymore.